An 87-year-old woman should not lose her home because the housing system has failed her.
But an individual property owner should not be turned into the welfare state because the same system has failed.
Both statements can be true.
The housing debate in Spain increasingly behaves as though we must choose only one.
The attempted eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman living in Madrid, became the catalyst for protests across the country. Housing measures were then defeated in parliament, unions began discussing a general strike and a snap election was called for 29 November.
Housing is no longer one issue among many. It has become the point at which social anxiety, generational inequality, tourism, property rights and distrust in institutions meet.
The public reaction is understandable. No civilised society can remain indifferent when an elderly person risks losing the home in which she lives.
But moral urgency does not remove the economic question.
Who pays for that protection?
Among the measures debated in Spain were rent limitations, extraordinary extensions of existing contracts, stronger restrictions on evictions, new rules for temporary and room rentals, and additional obligations for property owners.
Some of these measures address real abuses. A temporary rental contract should not be used to disguise what is effectively a permanent tenancy. A landlord should not be able to avoid basic responsibilities by changing the name of an agreement. Tourist accommodation can also distort residential markets in cities where the available supply is already extremely limited.
Regulation is necessary.
The problem begins when regulation becomes a substitute for housing policy.
If the State decides that a tenant cannot be evicted, even when the rent is no longer being paid, it has made a social decision. That decision may be entirely justified.
But why should its cost be carried only by the person who happens to own that particular property?
If society believes the tenant must remain protected, society should guarantee the rent or compensate the owner. Otherwise, a public right is being financed through a private loss.
A private landlord is not a welfare state.
That sentence will irritate some people. Perhaps it should.
It does not mean that property ownership comes without obligations. Owners must respect contracts, maintain habitable properties, pay taxes and accept reasonable limits on how their assets are used. Property has both economic and social consequences.
But responsibility cannot be unlimited simply because someone owns an apartment.
There is also a distinction that political debate too often erases.
A family renting out an inherited apartment is not the same economic actor as an investment fund controlling thousands of homes. A pensioner supplementing an income with one rental property is not the same as a company holding buildings empty while waiting for prices to rise.
Regulating them in exactly the same way may be administratively convenient. It is not necessarily fair or effective.
Spain’s housing deficit is projected to approach one million homes by 2028. That number cannot be explained by the behaviour of individual landlords alone.
It reflects years of insufficient construction in areas where demand is growing, slow planning processes, labour shortages, limited social housing, high development costs and fragmented responsibilities among the State, regions and municipalities.
Spain also has vacant properties and depopulated areas. But an empty house in a town without employment, transport or services does not solve the shortage in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga or another city under pressure.
The problem is not simply the number of buildings. It is whether suitable homes exist where people can actually build their lives.
You cannot regulate a million homes into existence.
A rent cap may slow the increase of an existing contract. It does not create the next available apartment.
Restricting tourist accommodation may return part of the existing stock to residential use, particularly in historic centres. It will not, by itself, eliminate a national housing deficit.
Preventing an eviction may protect a family today. It does not answer where the next family will live tomorrow.
None of this is an argument for leaving tenants alone against the market. Housing is not an ordinary consumer product. Losing access to it can mean losing stability, employment, education and dignity.
But precisely because housing matters so much, its protection cannot depend on forcing one private party to absorb the full cost of a systemic failure.
No tenant should be expected to pay for scarcity through homelessness.
No individual owner should be expected to pay for it through an indefinite private subsidy.
A society that recognises housing as a fundamental right must be prepared to finance that right collectively.
That means expanding social and affordable housing, mobilising suitable public land, accelerating permits, supporting the reuse of existing buildings and using industrialised construction where it can reduce time and cost.
It also means providing public guarantees when extraordinary protection prevents an owner from enforcing a contract.
My background in architecture makes me suspicious of the slogan ‘just build more’. Where we build, what we build and how homes connect to employment and services all matter.
My managerial experience makes me equally suspicious of ‘just regulate the price’. A price restriction can contain an immediate effect, but it does not repair the capacity that is missing underneath it.
A company facing a production shortage would not solve it indefinitely by ordering one supplier to absorb all the additional costs. It might negotiate temporary support, but it would also invest in capacity, identify the bottleneck, assign responsibility and establish a deadline.
Housing policy requires the same discipline.
Emergency protection should come with financing. Regulation should distinguish among different owners and different behaviours. Every temporary measure should be accompanied by a plan to increase the appropriate supply.
Otherwise, the emergency never ends. It simply becomes the system.
The Spanish debate is often presented as a choice between vulnerable tenants and greedy landlords. That framing is emotionally powerful, politically useful and economically lazy.
There are vulnerable tenants. There are exploitative landlords. There are speculative funds and properties deliberately kept empty.
There are also ordinary people who invested their savings in one apartment and are now being asked to perform a public function without public resources.
Recognising one reality does not require denying the others.
The real question is not whether tenants deserve protection. They do.
The question is whether the State can declare housing a right and then outsource the cost of delivering that right to individual property owners.
If housing is a fundamental right, where should the responsibility of the landlord end—and the financial responsibility of society begin?